About Us

Climbing Sutra was founded by Todd Rentchler in 1992 in Las Vegas, Nevada to provide Red Rock climbers with state-of-the-art climbing packs and harnesses. In 1993 Climbing Sutra began to manufacture theatrical harnesses for Cirque du Soleil and has since spent the best part of the last 10 years developing harnesses for the stunt industry. Todd was joined by his lovely, intelligent, and really fit wife Desiree in 1999.

Todd Rentchler grew up climbing and hiking in the great Northwest and in 1969 began sewing outdoor gear on his Mom’s old singer sewing machine at the tender age of 13. By the age of 20 he had bought a bigger sewing machine and begun to guide, ascend big walls, go on expeditions, and manufacture climbing harnesses and packs for other climbing bums. Over the years and between climbing, guiding, rigging, construction, and product managing for an outdoor company, the sewing machines multiplied and kept churning out personal and private label state of the art outdoor gear.

Desiree Locatelli was an early competitor in women’s traithalons and qualified for the Boston Marathon on four different occasions. She patented and manufactured one of the first women’s sport bras. She runs, hikes, climbs, practices pilates, sews, and as our Chief Financial Officer, wonders why we don’t charge more for our stuff!

Climbing Sutra is the result of a life-long obsession with the use and manufacture of high performance climbing and stunt equipment. Today Climbing Sutra is a small, service-oriented company with state of the art sewing machines and testing equipment whose technical expertise is applied to stunt and theatrical harnesses. We have invested many long hours engineering and testing our own unique harness components to make flying and stunt harnesses that have proper strength ratings, are more comfortable, lower profile, lighter weight, and perform better than any others. We stock, source, and manufacture our own buckles, hardware, and webbing. We are pleased to work closely with wardrobe designers to integrate harnesses into/over/under costumes.

Because your project is unique we invite you to use the products on these pages as a starting point, then call to discuss the possibilities. We are here to serve you!

Thanks! Todd and Desiree.

“sutra” means “stitch” or “thread” in Sanskrit